Sunday, March 22, 2015

Nisman, his defenders and the puticlubs

Haracio Verbitsky gives this sketch of the political positioning over the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was in charge of the investigation of the 1994 AMIA terrorist attack in Buenos Aires that claimed 85 lives (Señores y señorasPágina/12 22.03.2015):

[{Nelson} Castro alleged that Nisman was the victim of an institutional political assassination, the dogmatic assertion of the prosecutor's ex-wife, Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado. In her case, and in that of the prosector's mother, Sara Garfunkel, the personal family interest is obvious, because no life insurance covers suicide. In the same line, and for its own reasons, the government of Israel maintained in the observation of the 23rd anniversary of the attack on its {Buenos Aires} embassy {in 1992} that Nisman paid with his life for attempting to find the truth. Because of that, the prosecutor was buried in the section of {Jewish} community cemetery designated for heroes of Israel. Another point claimed by the American lobby organizations, operatives of the intelligence services or of the most extreme right wing of the Republican {Party}, which has take the {Washington} Capitol as it theater of operations, with the backing of the feathered philanthropist Paul Singer. {The "feathered" part is a reference to his Singer's role as the most visible of the "vulture funds" leaders currently trying to drive Argentina into bankruptcy with the help of a Nixon zombie judge.}

But none of this emerges from the that the prosecutor Vivian Fein is hearing, caracterized until today as a dubious death. There are no irrefutable elements to consider it a suicide, but even less to say that he was murdered. If the investigation culminates in the first hypothesis, will his remains be relocated to the edge of the cemetery reserved for those who take their lives? Unlikely, because this would imply a respect for the truth that until now this family and political group has not demonstrated.]

Verbitsky is being a tad quaint, or maybe generous, by assuming that there is a "right wing" within the Republican Party, as opposed to its being a hardline rightwing Party generally.

Verbitsky is addressed the defensiveness of Nisman's conservative defenders like Nelson Castro, Sergio Bergman, Nelson Castro and Jacobo Kovadloff, who would prefer not to have the apparent womanizing of Nisman's in the "pickup clubs [puticlubs] of Palermo Hollywood." (Pickup clubs here is a euphemism for whorehouse.) Because, Verbitsky argues, his extracurricular activities with dubious lady friends could be relevant to the question of whether Nisman was being blackmailed in some way. Given the extreme frivolousness of the serious formal charge he made against President Cristina Fernández, evidence that he was playing politics with the AMIA investigation, and his supposed suicide itself, it's hard to say Verbitsky doesn't have a good point there. Verbitsky also includes the suggestion that Nisman could have been using public funds to finance some of his recreational activities in the puticlubs.

Verbitsky discusses some dubious travel claims on the public dime that Nisman made, apparently involving girlfriends of some sort. The article also features a photo of the late Nisman with three party girls. And he observes that without Nisman's death, "no se hubieran abierto sus archivos, con las constancias de su vulnerabilidad ante cualquier extorsión" ("his files would not have been opened with their evidence of his vulnerability to any kind of extorsion").

Verbitsky also takes note of the report a week ago in the rightwing Brazilian magazine Veja last week that was also picked up by the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) news wire and the liberal Israeli Haaretz newspaper alleging a Venezuela-Argentine-Iranian plot based on cockamamie reasoning and evidence. Shredding the Veja story in several ways, Verbitsky also reports that Nilda Garré, a former Argentine Ambassador, who Veja named as a key figure in the alleged Iranian plot - and who Veja misidentified as having been a Montonero guerrilla back in the day - sent a letter to the magazine rejecting their account. Which was so ham-handed and based on such frivolous assumption is was pretty much a joke, anyway. Garré later served as Minister of Defense and Minister of Security under the Kirchner governments of Néstor and Cristina.

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